NEW YORK – There is a large faction of fans and media that think Dennis Hogan beat Jaime Munguia six months ago.
Hogan lost a 12-round majority decision to Tijuana’s Munguia on April 13 in Monterrey, Mexico, but he won over observers that watch him give Munguia a much tougher fight than his underdog status suggested. Jermall Charlo couldn’t care less about Hogan’s outing against Munguia, the unbeaten but defensively deficient WBO junior middleweight champion.
Charlo called Hogan “number 30,” as in his 30th conquest, during a press conference Thursday in Manhattan to officially announce their December 7 fight for Charlo’s WBC middleweight title. He also assured the Irish-born, Australia-based Hogan that theirs will be a much more difficult fight for him than when he met Munguia.
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“I’m not worried about his confidence,” Charlo told Showtime’s Brian Custer during the press conference. “Every fighter I fight is confident. He’s number 30. That’s what I call him. Dennis number 30. That’s what he is, so I’m not worried about it. We’re gonna get in there, and we’re well prepared. We could fight tomorrow and I’m ready. One-sixty is my division. Me and [trainer] Ronnie Shields, we drew up a nice game plan. I’m not Jaime [Munguia] or none of the fighters he done fought before.
“So, you know, you get a chance to get in there and see what he can do against, you know, my skills, my speed, my power. What, he said he had a heavyweight chin? Well, we gonna find out on December 7th. We gonna find out how heavy that chin is. And all the subliminal talk that he have, this belt not going nowhere. Number 30, stop talking like that.”
Hogan (28-2-1, 7 KOs), who has moved up six pounds to challenge Charlo, began his career at light heavyweight. He has fought at the junior middleweight limit of 154 pounds or slightly above it for the past five years.
Houston’s Charlo (29-0, 21 KOs) and Hogan will headline a “Showtime Championship Boxing” tripleheader December 7 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The two fights Showtime will air before Charlo-Hogan haven’t been announced.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
